It's among the most common illnesses and you're all but guaranteed to catch it at least once a year.

But if you do, there's nothing you can take to cure the common cold.

So if you've ever sat around sniffing, coughing and wondering why there's nothing you can do but wait for it to go away, this is for you.

After all, science has wiped out small pox and can cure even the deadliest diseases.

So why can't it cure the cold?

There are two main reasons.

Firstly , what we think of as a cold isn't one specific illness. It is actually caused by many different viruses. In fact, the cold is a general term for over 200 different viruses.

And secondly , as reported by Business Insider, it is pretty low down on the list of ailments that need curing.

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There are over 200 different viruses that have been implicated in causing the "common cold" and even the most common among those, rhinovirus, has more than 100 different strains.

As Professor Ron Eccles, director of the Common Cold Centre at Cardiff University, has previously pointed out: "The main reason that a cure to the common cold eludes us is because it isn't a single a disease. The common cold is a grouping of familiar symptoms including coughs, sore throats, sneezing and flu, which are caused by more than 200 different viruses.

"Finding a cure for small pox was easy because it was one virus, but the large number of viruses related to the common cold is what makes it difficult to crack.

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"Rhinoviruses, for example, are just one of groups of viruses causing colds and these viruses evolve very rapidly. Even if we were to develop a vaccine for rhinoviruses you would have to constantly develop new vaccines to keep up with the ever changing viruses."

And molecular biologist Kyle Graham pointed out on Quora: "It isn't a single disease and therefore each case can be different and would require different treatments. The most common culprit of the common cold is a group of viruses called rhinoviruses. These in themselves all vary from one to another and all cause similar symptoms. So essentially, asking science to cure the 'common cold' is equivalent to asking science to cure 'viruses'."

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The cold symptoms which are most common are a sore throat, a blocked or runny nose, sneezing and a cough. That's because the viral infection attacks the upper respiratory tract, including the nasal cavity, the pharynx (back of the mouth) and the larynx (voice box). Every child can get up to 12 colds a year and in adulthood we continue to get them on a regular basis.

Those symptoms come from your immune system kicking in to fight off infection, which can manifest as inflammation and congestion.

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Curing a cold isn't a priority. Though it can be a concern for infants, the elderly or those with pre-existing respiratory conditions, "for the majority of us, a common cold is more annoyance than threat," Ian Mackay, a virologist at the University of Queensland, told Business Insider.

And according to a doctor on Quora: "Developing a comprehensive vaccine for all the 'common cold' viruses that people encounter would be a massive and thankless task and it would never be complete. And since the 'common cold' is (for nearly everyone) a self-limited and basically benign disease anyway, there is little motivation to invest this kind of effort in a vaccine."

As well as being time consuming and difficult to keep up with, any vaccination program would obviously have huge cost implications as well.

Prof Eccles said: "Another reason I think we haven't found a cure is because common cold research isn't sexy. It's not as high profile enough and seen as being as important as research into say, cancer and HIV. Research into those diseases make the headlines where stories about common colds often don't."